Perchance to Dream (13 page)

“But you did,” Bertie whispered.

“Hush,” he said as the set shifted around them, a scrim curtain running across the stage with the blur of motion, the rush of air that suggested flight. When it came to a standstill, Bertie could see it was painted with the Théâtre’s façade. The marquee dangled from invisible-thin wires, Hamlet’s name spelled out in lights.

The bird-creature set Ophelia on the stage, feathers once more obscuring his features. “The journey came at a great cost. Summoning my almost-forgotten flight-magic awakened the wild creature I’d once been.”

Ophelia turned to him, grasping his face in her hands. “Don’t you dare leave.”

His every muscle trembled with the effort of holding on to her. “Don’t let go, whatever you do.” A haunting melody began to play: whale song, the call of the gulls. The bird-creature shuddered. “She’s calling to me. She claims she’ll open the portal.”

“Lies.” Ophelia wrapped herself around him like a starfish clinging to a rock. “Stay with me.”

“I love you.” His words were a croak.

“And I you,” Ophelia cried. “Do you doubt that?”

Bertie stiffened at the words.

Do you doubt that?

The line echoed all around them as a golden sheet of paper—
her page from The Book
—fluttered free of Ophelia’s pocket and then disappeared. The water-maiden immediately faded around the edges.

That
.
.
. that
.
.
. that
.
.
.

“Your opening line,” Bertie said.

The performance taking place that night … an understudy onstage perhaps …

Someone said Ophelia’s first line, acted her page back into The Book, pulled her back into the theater.

Unbidden, the Theater Manager’s face swam before Bertie as the stage tumbled into a blackout.

“No!” both women screamed in unison.

When the lights rose to half, Ophelia was trapped behind the scrim curtain. Only thin gauze separated her from the Scrimshander, who had fallen to his knees, but it was enough to keep them apart. He trembled, hands pressed against the stage floor, shoulders shaking. Without her to tether him, he began to transform.

Ophelia pounded on the painted door; though the scrim was no more substantial than a whisper, she could not broach it. “My love!”

His keening cry cut through the space, the humanity fading from it, and there was nothing of the man left to recognize her. The bird shook, settling every feather into place before he launched himself into the sky. The scrim curtains slithered offstage, their task performed, and Ophelia fell as though her strings had been cut. Bertie ran to her mother, past the stagehands who flipped the pages of
The Big Pop-up Book of Scenery
to the Théâtre’s Lobby with the swift crackle of stiff paper.

“Ophelia.” Bertie lifted the woman’s limp form into her arms.

“He promised he wouldn’t leave.” Her puppet-mother stared up, eyes wide and unseeing.

Bertie choked, wishing there was something she could do, except this was a mere recitation of events long since past. Two of the faceless, black-clad stagehands rushed in and pried her off Ophelia.

“You must let her finish.”

“The play is not yet done.”

“I don’t want to see anymore!” Bertie twisted in their grasp.

Stage Left, another stagehand pulled a tab so that a two-dimensional cutout of Mrs. Edith glided across the stage. As the Wardrobe Mistress passed before Ophelia, the stagehand pushed the tab back into the book. The figure flipped about, and the new version of Mrs. Edith held a swaddled bundle in her arms.

Ophelia sat upon the page, the salt water of her tears reclaiming her. “We must be patient: but I cannot choose but weep.”

The Theater Manager’s voice echoed all around them. “I think it would be best for everyone if you took the child away from the Théâtre.”

Mrs. Edith’s rejoinder was stern. “What does Ophelia think of your plan?”

“Not a thing,” he said. “She remembers nothing of the outside world, nothing about the child.”

Ophelia put her fists to her eyes, crying out. Accompanied by the croon of a single violin, a series of ghostly projections waltzed across the stage: dark silhouettes of her first meeting with the fulmar, their journey to the sea, their time spent together in the Aerie. The lighting darkened, the shadow-recollections showing their return to the theater. Ophelia clutching the Scrimshander. Panting in childbirth. Cradling a newborn baby. Then the projector clicked off and took the memories with it.

Rising, Ophelia gave Bertie that calm yet vague smile that had been her signature expression for years. “The curtain is coming down, don’t you see? You ought to be off.”

The blackout that followed was swift and certain. With the performance finished, a single, bare lightbulb flickered to life, dangling from a wire overhead. Spots danced through Bertie’s vision as her eyes struggled to adjust. Left alone once again, she swallowed and swallowed, refusing to cry.

For any of them.

CHAPTER TWELVE
Of His Bones Are Coral Made

O
phelia didn’t forget
me … her memories were taken from her.” Bertie’s fingers closed around a single feather the Scrimshander had left behind; it was cold, like the kiss of great icebergs passing through arctic waters. Frost slid through her, salt-spangled and tasting of the sea. “And my father didn’t abandon her. He was trying to stay.”

Not only that, but—

She’s calling to me. She claims she’ll open the portal.

Another crossing-over place. One that would lead her to Nate—

A whistle blast cut through the darkness, shattering the single lightbulb. Bertie ducked her head to avoid the glittering shower of glass.

“Bertie!” The cry seemed to come from the end of a train tunnel. “Bertie!” Getting closer.

She refocused her eyes upon four tiny perturbed faces only half illuminated by the tiny coal-burning stove.

“How long have you been like this?” Peaseblossom wanted to know, except her features were sculpted from marzipan.

“Insane?” Bertie levered herself upright, every muscle protesting. “All my life, I think.”

The boys had been carved from milk chocolate, dark chocolate, and what appeared to be peanut nougat. “Were you asleep?”

“Not exactly.” The very idea jabbed at her vitals with rusty nails, because if she had indeed been asleep, then why had she not dreamed of the grove, of Nate—

Unless I’m too late to rescue him?

Between them, the boys managed to get the door to the rear balcony closed, though they had to shove part of a snowdrift out with it. Beyond the windows, the landscape was a midnight canvas, and Bertie concentrated very hard until the fairies’ candy coating disappeared.

“Where’s Ariel?” Peaseblossom asked, adjusting the wick on the nearest lamp. Now the light sparked with a tiny cascades of red and orange glitter, sifting down the length of the walls to decorate the surface of the remaining snow.

“He left.” Trying to rein in her panic over the prospect that Nate might have unraveled just as reality was now coming apart along the seams, Bertie allowed her head to rest against the wall. “And I don’t think he’s coming back.”

Mustardseed gaped at her. “Why would he do such a thing?”

“Jealousy,” Waschbär said from the doorway. “Something to do with the cut on your hand, I imagine.” As he approached her, Bertie wondered if he’d always so closely resembled an upright raccoon, or if the absence of the medallion played such merry havoc with her senses. He knelt next to her and held out a paw. “Let me see the wound.” When she unfurled her fingers, the feather fluttered out. The sneak-thief raised it to his nose, already aquiver. “This is a fulmar’s feather.”

“You were right,” Bertie said. “My father is a seabird.”

The end of the sneak-thief’s nose twitched again. “Your hand smells of infection.” He placed his wrist against her forehead. “You’ve a fever, there’s no doubt about that.”

“Does my fever smell of strawberries?” Holding up her good hand, Bertie tried to imagine it full of fruit. “Hot strawberries? Boiling strawberry jam?”

“Keep talking,” Moth said before she could manifest any sort of preserves. Laying on his back, his arms and legs carved the suggestion of wings into the snow left inside the train car. “And don’t forget the hot buttered toast.”

Peaseblossom was already wrestling one of the railroad blankets off the luggage rack. “We need to cover her up.” The boys helped her tug the length of scratchy wool into place, then the fairy marched up Bertie’s chest and wagged a finger under her nose. “You’re to rest, do you hear? Waschbär, fetch a hot lemonade from the pie car and tell them to go easy on the whiskey.”

For a second, Peaseblossom looked like a tiny pink frosted cupcake, and Bertie shook her head, feeling her brain jiggle inside her skull. “I don’t want a hot lemonade. I need coffee, and lots of it.”

“No more coffee!” The pink cupcake shivered sprinkles all over Bertie’s collarbones.

“I can’t fall asleep.” The dreamlands beckoned with the promise of the ancient trees. Desperately wanting to step beyond the moss-curtain to check on Nate, Bertie feared that if she traveled again to that place of solace and safety, she might never come back, might never wake up. “We have to get to the Scrimshander. He knows where the portal is.”

“We’re on our way.” Moth solicitously tucked the blanket under Bertie’s chin. “You can’t speed up a speeding train.”

The others hastened to shout, “Don’t even think about it, Bertie!”

“I don’t want to die in a horrible, fiery train wreck!”

Bertie located the journal on the floor but the fountain pen was still nowhere to be found. The medallion’s absence weighed upon her more heavily than a suit of armor—something she knew for certain, because she’d once tried one on in the Properties Department—and her movements grew more sluggish with each passing moment.

Concentrate. There will be no one to save Nate if you slip into a dream coma.

“I’m not going to speed up the train,” she said, trying to reassure the fairies. “I’m just going to skip us ahead.”

“Like skipping a rock on a pond?” Moth had his forehead all wrinkled up, but he’d latched onto the perfect imagery.

“Just like that.” Bertie held up the feather. “I’ll use this to get us to the Scrimshander.”

“Many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose quills,” Moth muttered.

“Her dad’s not a goose!”

The sort of topsy-turvy delicious nonsense that appeared in Gilbert & Sullivan’s musicals fuddled Bertie’s thoughts. She hummed a few bars under her breath, then sang,

“The feather of my father is
The weapon with which I must write;
Though swords may poke through all the blokes
They cannot do the job just right. …”

The fairies looked at her, appalled.

Peaseblossom shoved Aleksandr’s plumed pen at her. “This will work better than a feather without ink, I believe. And no more rhyming for you.”

“Someone gag her with the blanket,” Cobweb added, “before she composes an entire operetta, and a troupe of rosy-cheeked maidens appears to sing a rousing chorus about their dashing lads in knee breeches!”

“I refuse to warble lines in a falsetto!”

“That will be the straw that not only breaks the camel’s back, but jumps up and down on its corpse and then hacks its head off!”

“With me in the starring role as the camel, I should think. Camels are nice, aren’t they?” Struggling to focus, Bertie commenced skipping the rock across the landscape. “Have you ever seen the Caravanserai, Waschbär?”

“Tens upon hundreds of times.” The sneak-thief crouched next to her, expression wary. “It’s the grandest of the Thirteen Outposts of Beyond, with an amphitheater large enough for entertaining an empress. You will never forget the first moment you set eyes upon it, rising out of the desert like a sand castle.”

Bertie tucked the Scrimshander’s feather behind her ear, opened the journal, and wrote,

They arrive, rather sooner than expected, at the Caravanserai.

Then, fearing they would miss it, she pushed the blanket off and struggled to her feet.

“What are you doing?” Peaseblossom looked alarmed. “You need to rest!”

“We’ve reached our stop, whether the good conductor knows it or not.” Bertie reached for the red-painted metal handle marked E
MERGENCY
B
RAKE
, and pulled upon it with her remaining strength.

Half a second for the bell to ring the engine, another half second for the conductor to react, followed by the terrible squeal of metal meeting metal. Ever nimble, Waschbär rocked back on his feet, hooking one arm around Bertie when she stumbled past him. The fairies, unprepared for the sudden cessation of forward momentum, smacked into the wall like particularly juicy mosquitoes hitting a windscreen.

“Ow, my spleen.” Moth, face pressed to the wood paneling, left a dribble of drool in his wake as he slid to the floor.

“I think my innards are now my outtards.”

“Why in the blue blazes would you do that, Bertie?”

“Because we’re here.” Dangling like a limp dishrag from the sneak-thief’s arm, Bertie caught a flicker of torchlight through the caboose’s window. One step closer to the Scrimshander, one step closer to Nate; she could feel it in her bones. “See?”

Waschbär half carried her to the door. “We should have had at least a night’s journey before us.”

Nevertheless, they’d arrived at a station and beyond that, the Caravanserai rose from the landscape, a massive golden sand castle against the night’s dark curtains. Pennants flapped atop the ramparts, caught in a wind that carried with it the suggestion of starfish and seaweed. All that had been snow before was now softly glittering stone. Burning at intervals, hundreds of torches illuminated the curving path to the gateway, where other travelers and pilgrims entered and exited despite the late hour. Indeed, distant cries from the marketplace, faint strains of music, the trumpet of a perturbed elephant all indicated that the Caravanserai was the sort of place that never slept.

The Innamorati disgorged from the train, marveling at the speed of the journey. The scene on the platform was organized chaos, with performers and roustabouts moving in a dozen directions at once and yet somehow managing to assemble themselves in preparation for a grand parade. Either they’d traded their muted costumes for ones of teal and turquoise, the deepest plum and brightest yellow, or Bertie’s fevered brain saw their true colors, no longer snow-filtered. Right in the thick of it, Valentijn’s vivid purple cape flashed with amethyst light, and when Aleksandr arrived on the scene, his ringmaster’s crimson and black livery were elaborately trimmed out with massive quantities of gilt cording and rope. An enormous emerald was affixed to the top of his walking stick, and he rubbed jeweled hands together with flashes of ruby, topaz, and star sapphire.

“We’ve reached the outpost sooner than expected,” he said.

Bertie, held upright only by the grace of Waschbär’s arm, was saved answering by the blare of the Innamorati’s trumpets. The elephant-men led a massive procession up a winding road of warm beige brick. The bird-girls rode upon their swings atop golden, flowering floats, while jewel-adorned acrobats walked miniature tightropes from one rolling platform to another. A massive tipsy calliope blasted music and steam from teetering brass pipes, with the Keeper of the Costumes sitting on its bench and pressing the keys as deftly as he operated the treadle sewing machine.

Waschbär settled Bertie atop the Mistress of Revels’s caravan, then took the reins to guide the mechanical horses into place. They rattled up the road at the end of the parade, an afterthought, an uninvited guest sneaking into a masquerade ball. Inscriptions spread along the walls in every imaginable language, though Bertie wondered if the missing scrimshaw was responsible for her inability to read them. Her throat felt naked without the medallion’s reassuring weight, exposing her to other sorts of pain.

Curse you thrice, Ariel: once for not giving me the chance to explain; another for taking what was mine; and the third for leaving.

“What do the words say?” Bertie asked.

“Welcome,” the sneak-thief replied with a brilliant smile. “May all who enter here find that which they seek.”

“What is it you seek, Waschbär?”

The sneak-thief stiffened next to her. “What do you mean?”

“You left the Brigands, you left the Innamorati. Are you chasing a wandering star? A dream? A woman? An idea?”

“Careful, now. Those words have more meaning than you know.” He threaded the reins through uneasy hands.

“How long before you leave the troupe?” Bertie persisted. “That’s inevitable, isn’t it? Valentijn told me you never see anything through to the end.”

“Oh, he did, did he?” Waschbär’s mouth tightened as they passed under the archway and entered the courtyard.

Even an Opening Night at the Théâtre was no match for this marketplace. Light came from torches, paper lanterns, and brass braziers, and the Caravanserai was a kaleidoscope that fragmented every color Bertie had ever seen into a myriad of new shades. Within arm’s length, there were trousers of midnight, a shirt the color of the sky at dawn, and a flowing dress that matched the spiked, yellow-throated irises for sale on a nearby table.

The Innamorati parade garnered quite a lot of attention as, calliope blaring, they progressed by inches. One girl walked forward, body encased in a hundred thin silver hoops that she kept in perpetual motion with gentle undulations of the hips and arms. The acrobats they’d seen rehearsing in the pie car performed a human juggling act. Dressed in peacock blue trimmed in silver fringe, they flung one another over stalls and carriages with raucous bird cries of “hup!” and “allez-oop!”

The color and chaos surrounding them reminded Bertie of an “All Players to the Stage” call at the theater, and she couldn’t help but search the crowd for a wayward air elemental.

Will Ariel’s winds tell him we’ve arrived at this strange place?

She thought, for a moment, that she could smell cool silk under the hot grease, exotic incense, and tropical flowers, but the suggestion of him was fleeting, and Bertie told herself that she had no time to spare for his games. “Which way to the White Cliffs?”

Waschbär, enjoying himself hugely and waving to the crowd, took a moment to answer. “The only way to the shore is through the marketplace.”

That’s all she needed to hear. With little thought to her limbs or recent jelly legs, Bertie slid down the side of the still-moving caravan, missing the cart’s wheels by mere inches. The fairies careened after her as the sneak-thief shouted to her and the horses both.

“Whoa! Where do you think you’re going?!”

Peering down the various stone-walled corridors, Bertie thought she spotted an exit portal. “Through the eye of a needle!”

He tossed the reins to the nearest roustabout. “Take that with you to the performers’ courtyard!” When Bertie quirked an eyebrow at him, Waschbär added, “They will take the parade all the way down the easternmost passageway, which leads to the amphitheater.”